Saturday, June 30, 2007

Car bombs in London? Why not? When London wannabe jihadis march with banners that declare "Islam Will Dominate the World!", what do you think these young men are trying to tell you? That they just want to get along? Hell no.

Two cars loaded with explosives were discovered in the heart of London's entertainment district, but the bombs were disabled before they went off.

....Mr Howard says it does not heighten security concerns in Australia, but people should always be alert.

"It is a direct reminder that in a society that is so similar to ours in so many ways we can't afford to be complacent," Mr Howard said.

Car bombs and IEDs are not so hard to design, if you are only trying to penetrate human flesh. Western societies are soft targets--particularly in the UK and some other European countries, where terror suspects are often released prematurely to bomb again.

Car bombs in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, and other non-western countries are not viewed with surprise when skimming the papers in the morning. Car bombs in London, Sydney, or New York, instantly become front page news. Why are there so few of them?

Remember the science fiction film "Alien?" The alien creature attacked some of the crew members, but not others. Some of the crew members were incubating the future generation of aliens. Best to let them live for now.

Thursday, June 28, 2007

The action in Iraq against religious extremists, fanatics, and terrorists, continues through the very hot summer. Here is a recent update from Bill Roggio, who travels frequently to Iraq as a citizen-journalist.

Mainstream news functions primarily as cheerleaders for the terrorists, as do most defeatist blog sites. By looking at the worldwide battle against religious terrorists as a bloody chess game, and following the moves, you will understand the undercurrents involved far better than any journalist with a six figure income or higher.

Monday, June 25, 2007

Michael Yon has stayed with the battle from the very beginning, and continues to report from the front.

Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) had tarnished its name here by publicly attacking and murdering children, videotaping beheadings, all while imposing harsh punishments on Iraqi civilians found guilty of violating morality laws prohibiting activities like smoking. The AQI installed Sharia court had sanctioned the amputation of the two “smoking fingers” for those who violated anti-smoking laws. In part because local sentiment was shifting against it, AQI synthesized with other groups and undertook an image makeover, christening itself “The Islamic State of Iraq.” But the new name was just lipstick on a pig here.

On the evening of the 24th I spoke with a local Iraqi official, Colonel Faik, who said the Muftis would order the severance of the two fingers used to hold a cigarette for any Iraqis caught smoking. Other reports, from here in Diyala and also in Anbar, allege that smokers are murdered by AQI. Most Iraqis smoke and this particular prohibition appeared to have earned the ire of many locals. After an American unit cleared an apartment complex on the 23rd, LTC Smiley, the battalion commander, reported that residents didn’t ask for food and water, but cigarettes. In other parts of Baqubah, people have been celebrating the routing of AQI by lighting up and smoking cigarettes.

Other AQI edicts included beatings for men who refused to grow beards, and corporal punishments for obscene sexual suggestiveness, defined by such “loose” behavior as carrying tomatoes and cucumbers in the same bag. These fatwas were not eagerly embraced by most Iraqis, and the taint traveled back to the Muftis who sat in supreme judgment. Locals, who are increasingly helpful in pointing out and celebrating the downfall of AQI here, said that during the initial Arrowhead Ripper attack the morning of the 19th, AQI murdered five men. Townsend’s men found the buried corpses behind an AQI prison, exactly where they’d been told to look for the group grave. Locals also directed Townsend’s men to a torture house. Peering through a window, American soldiers saw knives, swords, bindings and drills. AQI is well-known for its macabre eagerness to drill into kneecaps, elbows, ribs, skulls, and other parts of victims.

One local Mufti who was said to have always worn a hood and sunglasses—and to have somehow disguised his voice—was pointed out to the Iraqi Army this weekend, who promptly captured him. Iraqi officials said today that although they did not previously know that this man was a Mufti, his name had been on their target list. The Mufti is being questioned and his name has not been released.

Yes Virginia. Al Qaida is in Iraq and with the ready help of Iran and Syria, will stay as long as it takes to convince Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid that the jihadis are simply too tough to fight. For some, dhimmitude comes more easily than others.

It is dreadfully repetitive, the terror killings of civilians including women and children, the bloody torture with power drills to the head (no panties on the head for these manly jihadis). This is Pol Pot caliber terror on the populace, Taliban style terror. Communists and Islamists are very similar in that regard--both seem to reduce to the same bloody mindless tactics.

These fanatical jihadis do not rise to the level of humans, in my estimation. They have earned the most painful punishments imaginable, yet in my compassion were I to decide their fate, a single large caliber bullet in the head would likely be my merciful judgment.

Sunday, June 24, 2007

Bestselling author Dan Simmons has another message, this time about Iraq:

Iraq is not Vietnam.

As much as a few simplistic leading political leaders would like our departure from Iraq to be as simple as it was from Vietnam in 1975 – i.e. leave and let the locals suffer the consequences of our folly – it is not that simple. Even most of the leading Democratic candidates for the presidency, opposed as they are to the war itself, are responsible enough to acknowledge that simply packing up and leaving is not a real alternative.

When we bugged out of Vietnam, there was zero probability that the local insurgents (the Viet Cong) or their victorious North Vietnamese Regular Army allies would pursue American forces and interests around the world or back to the continental United States to continue the battle. There is almost 100% probability that victorious al-Qaida in Iraq and jihadists who have been fighting there for four years now – as well as their state sponsors (who are also the greatest state sponsors of jihadist terrorism in the world) Iran and Syria – will use the shattered, failed, and newly Islamist state of Iraq as a safe haven and recruiting and staging area for attacks on Americans and American interests everywhere, not excluding the continental United States.

In this very real sense, it matters not at all to Americans’ interests that we were responsible for turning Iraq into a failed state or that our bungling has made this jihadist victory and increased threat possible. History will deal with that. What has to matter to Americans’ interests is that total destabilization of the Mideast brought about by failure in Iraq not be allowed to occur, thus further jeopardizing American and Western interests and lives. Nor can we be allowed to make life worse for Iraqis, as will inevitably be the case should we abandon them to more years and decades of the current Hobbesian nightmare there.

The political steps needed to meet our objectives in a protracted counterinsurgency war in Iraq are much harder to achieve than military objectives, but they are equally as clear –

* An American president has to be elected who can reunite the country, acknowledge the mistakes and blunders of our adventure in Iraq to this point, and who can forge a new consensus of American policy and actions there that can be supported by a majority of the American people and by the majority of our traditional allies in Europe and the Mideast

* The current use of Iraq to promote short-term partisan, political goals has to stop. This is deadly serious business and members of both political parties have to begin behaving – if not like statesmen -- then at least as grown-ups who put America’s interests above their parties’ immediate interests and gains.

* The American people themselves have to start educating themselves on Iraq and the larger war-on-terrorism issues. To do this, they’ll have to get smarter fast. One way is to quit getting one’s news from Leno and Letterman and Bill Maher and the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. There should be a wide, serious, and sustained dialogue among Americans on Iraq and visions of the post-Iraq world and this dialogue must go beyond politics and polls. All informed opinion should be welcomed. We are past the point where the constant deluge of uninformed opinion can be tolerated.

* The U.S. military has learned much in Iraq. The troops who have fought there have shown not just amazing courage and incredible professionalism, but the ability to learn quickly so as to survive. U.S. soldiers, Marines, and reservists returning for their third, fourth, and fifth tours in Iraq are much wiser than the troops who went their as “liberators” in 2003 and who could not understand why people there were trying to kill them, much less how to beat them. Now it’s time for the American political establishment and the American people to learn from Iraq.

Professor Gunnar Heinsohn of the University of Bremen, studies the history of the rise and fall of nations as a result of demographic phenomena.

Heinsohn is not concerned with the absolute size of populations, but rather with the share of teenagers and young men. If this share becomes too big compared to the total population, we are facing a youth bulge. The problem starts when families begin to produce three, four or more sons. This will cause the sons to fight over access to the positions in society that give power and prestige. Then you will have a lot of boys and young men running around filled with aggression and uncontrollable hormones. And then we shall experience mass killings, until a sufficient number of young men have been eradicated to match society’s ability to provide positions for the survivors.

According to Heinsohn, 80 per cent of world history is about young men in nations with a surplus of sons, creating trouble. This trouble may take many forms — a increase in domestic crime, attempts at coups d’état, revolutions, riots and civil wars. Occasionally, the young commit genocide to secure for themselves the positions that belonged to those they killed. Finally, there is war to conquer new territory, killing the enemy population and replacing it with one’s own.

But, as Heinsohn emphasizes again and again, the unrest and the violent acts caused by youth bulges have nothing to do with famine or unemployment.

.... Take all the men aged 40-44 and compare them to the boys aged 0-4. Demographic capitulation is when you have 100 males aged 40-44 compared to less than 80 boys aged 0-4. In Germany the numbers are 100/50, in the Gaza Strip they are 100/464. I have compared some numbers for you, and these show that Denmark is on the verge of Demographic Capitulation. Your numbers are 100/80.”

Heinsohn’s statistical overview shows that if Denmark had reproduced at the same rate as the Gaza Strip (from 240 000 to 1.4 million between 1950 and 2006), then we would not have had a population of 5.5 million (compared to 4.3 million in 1950), but 25 million - more than New Zealand and Australia combined. In that case the median age of Danish males would have been 15 (in reality it is 39), and there would have been 3.6 million men of battle-ready age (15-29), whereas the real number is only 470 000.

... A growing number of Muslim nations — Algeria, Lebanon, Tunisia, Iran, Turkey and the rich Emirates — have all fallen under the demographic replacement limit. Iran now has a fertility rate of 1.7. That is the same as in Denmark, but less than in France. These countries still have a youth surplus from earlier, but in a few years they will no longer have any youth bulges that make them pose any danger.

Consequently he does not believe that the Iranian masses will set the whole region alight. This scenario is a projection of the situation immediately before the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and during the war between Iran and Iraq from 1980 to 1988, when Iran could send hundreds of thousands of boys and young men out into the minefields. These teenagers are no longer there.

....Annually about 150 000 Germans leave the country, most of them for the Anglo-Saxon world. Canada, Australia and New Zealand are ready to receive 1.5 million well-educated immigrants yearly, and they are doing everything to ease the way for them.”

“It is no wonder that young, hard-working people in France and Germany choose to emigrate. It is not just that they have to support their own ageing population. If we take 100 20-year-olds, then the 70 Frenchmen and Germans also have to support 30 immigrants of their own age and their offspring. This creates dejection in the local population, particularly in France, Germany and the Netherlands. So they run away.”

...“I am very pessimistic about the future. Europe’s situation reminds me of the principle that is called ‘The Fifth Village’ in Brandenburg and Mecklenburg, who have experienced population decline. So four villages are being abandoned and the remaining population is moved to the fifth village. However, that does not increase the birth rate in the fifth village. And after some time the fifth village will also be populated by old people, and there are no young people in the vicinity to work for their pensions.”

“Concerning the European continent apart from Scandinavia, Ireland and England, I believe that even the pessimistic population prognoses will turn out to be too optimistic. They assume that the young people will stay in Europe and bring up their own children, but that will not happen. A study from 2005 showed that 52 per cent of the Germans between 18 and 32 wanted to leave. They might not mean it but they are entertaining the thought. The really qualified are leaving. The only truly loyal towards France and Germany are those who are living off the welfare system. Because there is no other place in the world that offers to pay for them. America, Canada and Australia count on receiving our best qualified youths, and they will get many of them. That will put an end to innovation and put a damper on economic growth in Europe. In Germany we are already forfeiting billions upon billions in revenue because we lack qualified people to take on the jobs. We have two million jobs that we cannot fill - and a welfare-dependent population of six million, and the two do not meet. The welfare group grows each year because of new babies, but the vacant job slots are not filled.”

Europe is in very deep trouble, but she is not aware of the problem. She is growing deathly cachectic, but believes she is only fashionably slender. While rejecting the faithful but hickish farmboy (the US), she flirts with suitors who have sworn to destroy her body and soul. She sees this behaviour as a sign that she is in control of her own destiny.

Saturday, June 23, 2007

European media has gone on the warpath against the US, stirring up the European people to an anti-American frenzy. It is as if World War I, World War II, and the cold war never happened. Europeans have very short memories.

Since Europe is being infiltrated by muslim immigrants who hate Europe, the future of Europe is very dim. You would think the Europeans would look to allies wherever they could find them. Sadly, the European media is destroying the ability of Europeans to see the world clearly.

Friday, June 22, 2007

IEDs are an immensely simple weapon that allows an unskilled, low-tech, pre-industrial force to extract casualties from a generally superior opponent. The value of the IED is not only does it allow what would otherwise be low grade cannon fodder to kill people with relative impunity, IEDs tend to kill several soldiers with a single blast. A lot, probably a majority, of IEDs are found by US forces before they are detonated and a the overwhelming majority of the remainder do nothing but created a pyrotechnic display.

.... U.S. soldiers on patrol here recently watched a man walk into the street with a bomb and begin to dig. They killed him before he finished. Out stepped another man to finish the job, so they shot him too — then another, and another and another.

In all, five people tried to place the makeshift bundle of munitions in the same hole within an hour.

"You see what we're up against," said Adam Jacobs, a 26-year-old Army captain, after recounting the astonishing story.

....The answer to getting the bombmakers has two fairly simple components, though as Clausewitz noted "in war even the simple is difficult." The first is to let the Iraqi Army, which is also suffering heavily from IEDs, read Miranda rights to anyone captured with explosives or an IED and then ask them where said materials are going to, or where they came from, while, of course, avoiding outrages against their person or dignity. The second is to kill the bombmakers or drive them out of the business by intimidation.

Of course, eventually the special forces advisors who are left behind to work with the Iraqi security forces may be given the green light by their hosts to do their worst to anyone in Iraq who designs and builds IED's. The kid glove treatment the US military has used toward the bombmakers cannot go on indefinitely. Too many US military personnel have been killed unnecessarily because lawyers in the US State Dept and the Pentagon have decided to shackle the hands of the men on the ground.

The combat in Baqubah should soon reach a peak. Al Qaeda seems to have been effectively isolated. The initial attack on 19 June achieved enough surprise that al Qaeda was caught off guard and trapped. They have been beaten back mostly into pockets and are surrounded and will be dealt with. Part of this is actually due to the capability of Strykers. We were able to “attack from the march.” In other words, a huge force drove in from places like Baghdad and quickly locked down Baqubah.

...I have been with LTC Fred Johnson for several days. LTC Johnson seems to recharge on sunlight or moonlight and can run a man into the ground. After seeing the humanitarian need building with no action to abate it underway, Johnson was very unhappy. He immediately started jerking choke chains on the people who are supposed to be handling humanitarian need, trying to avert having it build into a crisis.

This is where the inept local Iraqi commanders come in. I’ve seen them in meeting after meeting, over the past few days, finding ways to be underachievers. The Iraqi commanders have dozens of large trucks and have only to drive to our base to collect the supplies and distribute those supplies to the people displaced in the battle. Our troops are fully engaged in combat, yet the Iraqi leaders were not able to carry that load without LTC Johnson supplying the initiative. The Kurds would have had this fixed yesterday. The Iraqi commanders in Mosul would have fixed this.

The American commanders and troops seem quite capable of wiping out the enemy when allowed. Of course their hands are tied for many political reasons, and eventually they will naturally need to hand over the non-Kurdish parts of Iraq to Arab leaders.

Anyone who has read any of the Al Fin blogs dealing with demographic topics will understand that the writers on these blogs have little esteem for Arabs. Given the general incompetence and lack of initiative of most Arabs, it is difficult to expect very much out of Iraq in the long term.

Perhaps the best scenario for Iraq's people is that Iraq not fall under the control of the type of Islamists who have made Iran and Saudi Arabia the hellholes they are. Even worse would be a Talibanisation of Iraq. Anything is possible, depending upon the political climate in the US in the next few years. Jimmy Carter is, after all, recommending that the US embrace Hamas in Palestine. Is Hillary Clinton's position really that much different than Carter's? Probably not.

Today Gaza. Tomorrow Hamburg or Paris.

The "cut and run" types believe that anything is better than war. How little they know of the genuine choices and possiblities. "Peace" can easily become more hellish than war. Look at Cambodia under Pol Pot, China under Mao, Russia under Stalin. Imagine a Hitler's Germany that never invaded the rest of Europe, but still went about exterminating all the Jews it could get its hands on. That would have been "peace", but a hellish peace.

Cut and run types have gotten this far by avoiding the difficult questions. Why should they change that now?;-)

At 16, having felt socially isolated at school because he wanted no part of gang or popular culture, the author began his adolescent revolt. He fell in with Islamists at the East London Mosque, who were much frowned upon not only by his father, but also by the congregation of the Brick Lane Mosque (once a Huguenot church, then a synagogue, and now a mosque, reflecting the successive waves of immigration into the East End over the last three centuries), which the author had previously attended.

The East London Mosque was the scene of struggles, sometimes violent, between various Islamist factions, whose adherents were all young men. They disagreed over such matters as whether it was permissible to take part in the British political system, and whether the best tactics were mass preaching or the establishment of an Islamist conspiratorial vanguard. The parallels with the history of communism are striking. Like Marxists, Islamists also believe that a state of affairs can come about—if only one follows the correct prescription—in which all human problems as we have known them will disappear.

As is often the way with young men who join cults, absorption into the world of the Islamists answered some of the author’s personal problems—his need for friends, for example, and for a sense of transcendent purpose. Alienation from his parents only confirmed his view that he was taking a courageous path.

The author attended a college in the East End, and became the leader of its Islamist students. With immense energy, he organized activities and meetings, arguing against opponents with the single-minded ferocity known only to those in thrall to an ideology. He and his associates managed—without much difficulty—to intimidate and bully the college authorities into providing a prayer room for Muslims, though the college was avowedly secular. The authorities were, however, powerless to resist because they were uncritical adherents of multicultural pieties. (By contrast, the dean of the medical school where I used to teach told me that Islamists had approached him, demanding a prayer room, to which he acceded on the condition Christians and Jews could use the room on the same terms—whereupon the demand was withdrawn and never heard again.)

After a few years, the author grew disenchanted with Islamism. This, too, is not uncommon among cult adherents as they mature. The incident that spurred his break was the murder of one Islamist by another. But he was already tired of the endless squabbling of the Islamists and their habit of regarding all people of different opinions as inferior beings, to whom one owed no decency.

He resumed his education, graduated from school, and soon found an excellent job in a bank, with prospects for rapid advancement (so much for the notion that the cause of Islamism in Britain is a lack of economic opportunity). However, he was not cut out for life in the bank, and decided to study history at university, at the same time returning to his father’s more contemplative form of Islam. This impelled him to learn Arabic, which he studied in Damascus for two years with apolitical Sufi scholars. His mastery of Arabic helped him find employment in the British Council in Saudi Arabia. His experiences in that country—the gross and grotesque disparities of wealth, the cruel maltreatment of racial minorities, the lack of freedom, the oppression of women, the ignorance and superstition—finally convinced him that a secular democracy such as Britain’s was not without many virtues.

I suspect that this particular Islamist was simply too intelligent and open-minded to completely lose himself in the rising hatred and bloody-mindedness of the global jihad movement. He is a lucky one.

Islam is experiencing a demographic bulge of young men, which is feeding the islamist jihad. This demographic phenomenon and its accompanying movements of violence, is predictable to any student of populations and history.

Eventually, the bulge will pass, and the threat of violence from Islam will diminish. How long will it take? Between 50 and 100 years, optimistically.

During that time, the developed world will not only have to deal with the Islamists in its midst--causing Beirut like scenarios in Brussels, Paris, London, Oslo, Amsterdam, and other European cities. The fact that the demographic expansion is occurring in the welfare states of Europe--and being financed by welfare payments--will lead to a diminishing of the human capital of Europe. The reason for that is that populations with average IQ of 85 or less will be displacing populations with an average IQ of 100 or greater. As most students of IQ realize, a population with an average IQ below 90 almost never supports a sustainable high tech society.

A recent Time article by Joe Klein describes some of the recent "turning away" by Sunni insurgents, from an earlier alliance with Al Qaida in Iraq.

After the briefing I asked Colonel Antonia if he'd asked the Sunnis why they had turned against al-Qaeda. "They said it was religious stuff," he said. "AQI demanded that the women wear abayas, no smoking and they preached an extreme version of Islam in the mosque. They'd also spent the winter without food and fuel because of the violence al-Qaeda was causing. One guy said to me, 'We fought against you because you invaded our country and you're infidels. But you treat us with more dignity than al-Qaeda,' and he said they'd continue to work with us. I've been involved in many operations here and this is a first—usually everybody's shooting at us. This is the first time we've had any of them on our side." (In web postings, the 1920 Revolutionary Brigade has denied it is cooperating with the Americans.)

Odierno later told me similar anti-al-Qaeda rebellions were happening throughout the country, including some neighborhoods of Baghdad. "Iraqis notice things. They noticed what happened when we began to support the Sunni tribes against al-Qaeda in al-Anbar. And al-Qaeda seems to have overplayed its hand."

Does this mean the US is "winning" the war in Iraq? Of course not. Iraq is a battlefield where "soldiers" from many nations are fighting for their own reasons, while the Iraqis themselves are divided by tribe, clan, ethnicity, religion, and goals for the future. Perhaps the Kurdish region of Iraq has a future, but the Arab parts of Iraq are cursed with the historical tendency of Arabs to cut their own throats while trying to cut the throats of everyone around them. Still, if the tribes of Iraq can agree to eradicate the religious extremists among them--both Sunni and Shia--perhaps even the Arabs can find some peace eventually.

Michael Yon is a self-financed journalist of the Iraq war who regularly risks his life to bring news of the war that mainstream journalists making six figure incomes cannot be bothered to provide. In this story he describes his experience of the ongoing large scale military operation dubbed Operation Arrowhead Ripper.

The combat has only just begun, and media has now figured out this is serious business. During the morning brief (June 20th), Major Robbie Parke mentioned that CNN, TIME, Reuters and some others, are trying to get out here now. Problem is space.

...The enemy in Baqubah is as good as any in Iraq, and better than most. That’s saying a lot. But our guys have been systematically trapping them, and have foiled some big traps set for our guys. I don’t want to say much more about that, but our guys are seriously outsmarting them. Big fights are ahead and we will take serious losses probably, but al Qaeda, unless they find a way to escape, are about to be slaughtered. Nobody is dropping leaflets asking them to surrender. Our guys want to kill them, and that’s the plan.

....most local people apparently are happy that al Qaeda is being trapped and killed. Civilians are pointing out IEDs and enemy fighters, so that’s not working so well for al Qaeda.

But you never hear about this on the mainstream media. Most people are content to condemn the involvement of the US in Iraq, based upon what they hear from the mainstream. Just like most people are content with their beliefs about climate change based upon mainstream media reports. Ignorance can bolster their beliefs so much that they become addicted to it.

Thursday, June 14, 2007

Iraq is not as simple as the media wants you to believe. Here are a few of the complexities involved.

The terrorists have changed tactics, and so has the United States, and that says much about where the battle for Iraq is going. There are fewer bombs going off in Baghdad, so the bombers are trying to make each one count more. Thus, in the last week, three truck bombs took out bridges and overpasses, seeking to make life miserable for an many Iraqis as possible. This is because, despite all the dismal news from Iraq, what doesn't get reported is that most of the country is quiet, and there has been 4-5 percent growth in the overall economy for the past four years. Actually, there was a huge jump in economic growth, about 40 percent, in the year after Saddam fell. That has now settled down. Anyone who has been to Iraq, particularly American soldiers, can't help but notice the traffic jams, shops full of goods, and all those Iraqis walking around with their new cell phones. Yes, it's a war zone, but it's also a growing economy.

Our soldiers are fighting brilliantly, and history will record they are defeating the enemy while suffering historically low casualties. But if the sacrifice of American youth is not tied — daily, hourly — to larger strategic and humanitarian goals by eloquent statesmen who believe in the mission, then cynicism follows and, with it, despair.

The establishment of consensual government in Iraq, with the concomitant defeat of jihadists, will have positive ripples that will undermine Islamism and help to cleanse the miasma in which al Qaeda thrives. But again, unless explained, most Americans will not see a connection between the ideology of the head-drillers and head-loppers we are fighting in Iraq and those who try to do even worse at Fort Dix and the Kennedy airport. The war to remove Saddam was won and is over; the subsequent and very different war in Iraq that followed is for nothing less than the future of the Middle East — and now involves everything from global terrorism and nuclear proliferation to the world’s oil supply and the future of Islam in the modern world.

After my fifth trip to Iraq to report on Marines, I've concluded that, at least among Marines, morale remains high — high not despite the public's disaffection with the war but possibly because of it. The declining poll numbers and rising political upheaval appear to have driven Marines closer together.

Marines, for instance, continue to exceed their reenlistment goals; a recent study showed that those who have deployed twice to Iraq are more likely to reenlist again than those who have only gone once — and that the Marine least likely to reenlist is one who has not deployed to Iraq.

....As Cpl. Alexander Lengle, 21, of Lancashire, Pa., said of the debate that dominates much of the news: "That's political. It's not our part of the spectrum. We've got a job to do."

At chow halls at the larger bases, there are usually televisions at opposite ends, one set to sports, one to news. The TV showing sports gets the larger audience, particularly among the young enlisted troops. "It's like noise in the background," Lance Cpl. Jacob Holmes, 21, of Tallahassee, Fla., said of the news channels.

When the 2nd Battalion, 5th Regiment needed volunteers to extend their enlistments so they could return to Iraq and mentor younger Marines making their first deployment, the talk was not of foreign policy but of loyalty to each other. Two hundred Marines — 25% of the battalion — volunteered to return to war-torn Ramadi.

"It's not for everybody, but it's definitely for me," said Sgt. Kemp Miller, 25, of Philadelphia, making his third deployment.

While the moronic Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid insist that the US may as well cut and run from Iraq, since the war is lost, the marines who are actually there have a different opinion.

Of course the Bush administration is swimming upstream in an attempt to change the arab mindset in Iraq. The Kurds seem ready to sign on to modernism and democracy, but the arabs are considerably more primitive in outlook. It takes more than a few years to enlighten a stone-age people.

There simply may not be enough time on the US political clock for the transition to occur. Certainly Iran's bloody theocracy is staking its future on preventing Iraq from succeeding.

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Multiculturalist political correctness tells us that third world people cannot be racists. Only western people of European extraction can be racists. So when muslim immigrants to the UK talk about killing as many white people as they can, and kicking all the white people out of the British Isles, you can be assured that such immigrants are not racists. Not at all.

But you may be racist yourself, if you are concerned about some of the threats discussed in the above video. So relax, drink another margarita, escape to whatever can take your mind off the unpleasant possibilities.

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Iran is only 50% Persian. The rest is composed of Kurds, Armenians, Azerbaijans, Arabs, Turkmen, and other ethnicities. A lot of these non-Persian Iranians are feeling a bit left out of the revolution.

There are 12 million Kurds spread across four provinces in Northwestern Iran and another one million Kurds in a far-eastern province. Iran’s total population is estimated at more than 60 million.

As with Kurds in neighboring states, the Iranian Kurds have a series of discrimination complaints. He ticks them off. Kurds are deprived of education in their mother tongue and denied money for schools and roads, even though they pay heavy taxes to the central government, according to Mohtadi. Generally, Iran’s Kurdistan is run not by Kurds, but by people appointed by Tehran. Not a single police chief is a Kurd, he said. Indeed, none of the top jobs in the four Kurdish provinces are held by a Kurd. “It is a cultural occupation, a case of clear discrimination.”

....Still, support is growing among Kurds in Iran, he said. “A decade ago, it is very difficult to get cooperation. Now people complain that you don’t give them missions. Why am I not a member? they ask me.” You have to earn the right to be a voting party member, he explains.

“We have had 4,000 martyrs in past 28 years, now new recruits are strengthening the party.”

Azerbaijanis came late to liberation movement but their democratic management is growing fast. “This is one of the biggest political changes is that we have managed to win over the Shiite Kurds of southern [Iranian] Kurdistan,” he said.

The internal organization for leading and organizing clandestine staff has doubled twice in the past year, according to Abu Baker Modarrisi, who is a member of the collective that runs the clandestine service.

“We send people into Iran every day,” he tells me. “We sent an organizer yesterday to a Kurdish city to set up a cell.”

While western leftists and other morons act as public apologists and doormats for the bloodthirsty Iranian dictatorship, it is the people of Iran, neighboring Iraq, and Lebanon who are suffering.

Eventually the butchers of Tehran will get their due. When they do, they will possibly be wondering about the paucity of virgins, and the sulfurous odours, in Paradise. Just kidding. But if you cannot joke about an idiotic group of people who hold idiotic beliefs, what can you joke about?

Sunday, June 10, 2007

It is rare for mainstream universities to allow free speech on campus. But that is what happened recently at UC Irvine. The three ex-terrorists spoke freely and were received civilly--even enthusiastically--by the UC Irvine audience.

“The message these three ex-terrorists bring to the students is so powerful and cuts through the propaganda of those who support terrorist aims and goals that the MSU was simply afraid to confront it, head on. This is the purpose of these events at our colleges.”

Kamal Saleem spoke first and repeated his contention that America is still asleep after 9/11. A terrorist since the age of 7 who went on several missions for the PLO, smuggling explosives in the Golan Heights hidden under the bellies of sheep he herded into Israel as part of his “mission,” Saleem told the audience he had been active on US campuses later in life when as an adult he came to America with the purpose of spreading jihad among Muslim students across America and to recruit new members to the fold. An auto accident that almost killed him turned him around due to the kindness of people in this country who helped him—the same people he was told to wage jihad against.

....Next up came Zak Anani who explained he was descended from a long line of Muslim imams and other Islamic religious leaders so he was well versed in the Koran. He, too, was instilled with the idea of jihad from age three and by age 13 was part of an Islamic terrorists gang in Lebanon where he tacked up 223 kills by the time he left the movement at age 17. He explained how his family and the Koran taught him that “You are the best nation ever, and that the People of the Book, the Jews and Christians are perverted” and how “God has cursed them.” He explained how he converted to Christianity and how by just converting his religion he had endured over a period of 18 years 20 attempts to take his life, both in Lebanon and even in America and Canada. He admonished the audience, “They say that Islam is a ‘peaceful’ religion and quoted from the Koran Chapter 9, surah 5 that calls for Muslims to “ambush the infidels” and promotes a culture of death.

Anani finally left Islam because he said he was brought up to love death in the name of jihad more than life. He continued, “We want life [in America] for us and our children, not death” and explained how he changed so his daughter and her other siblings would have a chance in life. Because of this, he said, he felt he had to rise up and speak out by witnessing to others.

...The audience was clearly moved and impressed by all the speakers, since it gave them a standing ovation for several minutes as the evening concluded.

A similar appearance by the three ex-terrorists was canceled at Princeton--the Princeton administration was afraid that the Princeton student body and community was too uncivilised to allow free speech at Princeton. And they were probably right.

Fortunately, there are still venues where the truth about Islamic terrorism and leftist appeasement can still be told.

Saturday, June 02, 2007

The Iranian clerics have much to fear, and not just from foreign threats. Their incompetence and corruption has ruined the economy. Unemployment among young Iranians is about 50 percent. Some 40 percent of the population is on the government payroll, and there is not enough oil money to pay off all the people who do support the government (about a third of the population). Thus the government keeps printing more money, and the result in an inflation rate of over 20 percent. The Iranian people are getting increasingly restless, and, more ominously, surly. The government has relied on street level gangs of young Islamic conservatives to discourage such behavior. But it isn't working, and there have been more and more street battles. The government can more readily call in reinforcements, and has won all these brawls so far. But if the government starts losing them, it's the beginning of the end. Some of the kids have cell phones, a technology the government tried to keep out.

...The clerics fear an event similar to the one that suddenly destroyed communist rule in Russia and Eastern Europe 18 years ago. For that reason, much attention and cash is spent on the street level muscle (the Basij militia), and a constant willingness to use physical violence against any protests or "un-Islamic" behavior. The universities are being purged of any staff suspected of being disloyal to the clergy. Any contacts with foreigners are being discouraged, as the Iranians fear U.S. groups that go around giving workshops on how to overthrow a dictatorship using non-violent means. Such workshops are held for Iranians across the Gulf, and many Iranians sneak over to participate.

Friday, June 01, 2007

Things have not changed much, since the days of TE Lawrence. Westerners keep expecting their arab allies to think in a rational, western manner. Arabs, however, will be arabs.

A day earlier some Iraqi Police officers stumbled upon a suspected weapons cache and exchanged a few rounds with some AQIZ operatives.

As is often the case, the IPs did not immediately report what happened and even then the IP, like most Iraqis, have difficulty with spatial relationships, maps and directions.

Iraqis tend to know only one unit of measure--one kilometer. Everything is one kilometer, even if it is 200 meters or 2000 meters, it is one kilometer.

With a location figured out the paratroopers of Able Company 3-509 walked out of OP Delta in the middle of the night to search a wide swath of the area south of the river.

...The IP Lieutenant was talking with a friend of his, a retired officer from the Iraqi Army in the old regime when Captain Matthew Gregory, Commanding Officer of Able Company asked about the IED planted on the Subayot road.

It seemed everyone--the retired officer, the IP Lieutenant, the PSF--everyone but the Army and Marines knew who planted the IED.

The soldiers and Marines stood there for a moment in stunned silence.

After a few minutes of questioning and getting a few more details the Marine Lieutenant told the IP to go down there and get the guy they said planted the IED.

There was some hesitation and some hemming and hawing. It is a dangerous part of town, it is night...

The Marine Lt. had no sympathy, "You have 45 minutes to get this guy."

About an hour later the call came over the radio for an Explosive Ordinance Disposal team to come out.

The guy who planted the IED had 20 pounds of TnT, blasting caps, detonators and various other pieces of military hardware.

....An IED will go off or something will happen and the IP and PSF say Jamil, or Whalid did it. And it often turns out that Jamil and Whalid did do it, leading American officers to ask why they waited to tell us after the fact.

The answers, like many things in Iraq, are convoluted or just plain bizarre.

But, inshalla, the PSF and IP will catch the guy. Sometimes they operate for 96 hours straight catching known AQIZ operatives. Other times they can't be moved for anything other than tea, cigarettes and Maxim Magazines.

As T.E. Lawrence wrote of the Arab Army of WWI in Revolt in the Desert, 'No English officer would work so hard, to get so little out of so many.'

This is as should be expected. Foreign cultures are foreign. Foreign cultures create foreign brains that think in different ways.

Such differences allowed westerners to colonise large parts of the world. Then the differences inevitably created schisms leading to the de-colonisation of the world. The jury is out concerning which regime benefitted the third worlders the most--colonisation or post-colonisation. In many ways, it probably made very little difference.